Israeli Supreme Court on Thursday issued a ruling that Israel can revoke the citizenship status of Palestinians and be made stateless. This decision certainly further strengthens the apartheid status of the Zionist regime.
According to the decision of the Israeli Supreme Court, the state can revoke the citizenship of persons found to have committed a “breach of loyalty” to the state, including terrorism, espionage, or treason. However, human rights groups suspect the policy will only apply to non-Jewish citizens even if it renders them stateless.
The verdict resulted from discussions on the 2008 Citizenship Law in Israel, which authorizes states to revoke citizenship based on acts that constitute a breach of loyalty.
The controversial ruling follows separate appeals in the case of two Palestinian Israeli citizens convicted of carrying out attacks that killed Israeli citizens. Both were sentenced to lengthy sentences, but the state tried to strip them of citizenship.
Although the Israeli Supreme Court rejected the abolition of citizenship in both cases on the grounds of “serious procedural flaws,” however the Supreme Court ruled that the practice of revocation of citizenship itself is constitutional even if a person becomes stateless as a result.
A joint statement from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and Adalah, an Arab rights group, against the decision, considered the law discriminatory and feared it would be used only against Palestinians in Israel. About 20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinians, almost all of whom are descendants of Israel’s 1947-48 ethnic cleansing of Palestine that expelled the indigenous non-Jewish population.
In a statement, ACRI’s Oded Feller said that there had been many cases of Jews in Israel taking up terror, but the Interior Ministry has never considered revoking their citizenship. Feller further added that many countries allow revocation of citizenship but leaving a person stateless altogether is something else.
Although, many countries have laws that allow the practice of revocation of citizenship and become a trend developed in the last two decades as the “war on terror” movement has grown. But such a policy is considered highly controversial, primarily aimed at the non-white population. No government exercises ruthless powers that render individuals completely stateless.
International law prohibits a country’s government from revoking its citizens’ citizenship status if it leads to statelessness.
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